


if i reach you

by sunshineinthestorm



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Stiles breaks Lydia out of Eichen, once again only rated m because of cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5128412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineinthestorm/pseuds/sunshineinthestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia isn’t sure what she expected to find in there. She thinks that some part of her believed, in spite of everything, that she’d walk into the room and Stiles and Scott would be joking together and Stiles would look up when she came in and give her a disgustingly wide grin. But instead she has to stare at Stiles’ prone form, draped in a hospital gown that’s too loose for his frail body. There are too many tubes, and too many wires, and the machine is beeping far too slowly for Lydia’s liking. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be the one who ended up in a coma. She was the one who was two minutes away from a lobotomy when the power to Eichen House flickered and died. She’s the one who should be lying on that hospital bed right now. Not Stiles. Never Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. all that you are

**Author's Note:**

> I know In Those Amber Eyes is also a Stiles-breaks-Lydia-out-of-Eichen fic, but I got a prompt on tumblr that turned into this and since I am apparently incapable of writing short drabbles I figured I might as well post it here too.
> 
> This will probably get a second chapter at some point.
> 
> (All chapter titles are from "Tenerife Sea" by Ed Sheeran.)

"Lydia! _Lydia!"_ Stiles keeps calling her name because he can’t know that his shout is only a whisper next to the cacophony of voices crowding Lydia’s mind. She claps her hands over her ears and screams at nothing and everything, but Stiles thinks the scream is directed at him.

“I’m sorry,” he shouts, flailing his hands in the air. “I don’t know what they’ve been doing to you in here, Lydia, but that can all end tonight. You’re safe, but we have to get out of here  _right now_  while Scott’s distracting them.”

Lydia can’t answer him — can’t even open her mouth without screaming — until Stiles steps forward, grabs her hands, and pulls them away from her ears. “Come on,” he says, his voice gentle and soft — and somehow that soothing murmur cuts through the voices better than shouting ever could. “Can you stand?”

Lydia manages to shrug, and that’s enough for Stiles. He places one hand on her back and the other on her elbow, and his support gets Lydian to her feet, out the door, and around a few corners… where they run straight into a dread doctor.

Lydia stumbles backward, ready to retreat all the way into her room if necessary, but for some crazy reason, Stiles doesn’t back off. “Let us through,” he growls, planting his feet in front of the doctor.

His actions are so utterly  _insane —_ even compared to everything else she’s seen in this place — that Lydia finds her voice again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demands, tugging at Stiles’ elbow. “We’ll find another way out. We’ll go through the vents or something.”

“No,” Stiles replies without missing a beat. “You’re bleeding, and shaking, and paler than Scott when he’s affected by wolfsbane, and I am not going to force you to crawl through vents to get to freedom.”

“Stiles, he’s going to  _kill—_ ”

But Stiles is already lunging for the dread doctor, hitting him with such force that they both skid across the room. For an instant, Lydia is actually hopeful — and then the dread doctor pulls a syringe out of his pocket and stabs it into Stiles’ neck. She can only watch as the light drains out of his eyes and he slumps to the floor.

Whatever the dread doctor says to her next is muffled by the scream that claws its way out of her throat. “ _STIIIIIIIILLLLLESSSSS_!”

Her scream slams into the dread doctor, pushing him into the wall so hard that his mask actually dents, and he retreats. Lydia would feel proud if Stiles Stilinski wasn’t sprawled across the floor, unconscious or worse. 

She rushes to his side, but her hands are shaking too much to take his pulse. At that revelation, she screams again, ignoring the orderlies that have started to converge on her (because how could she care about getting locked up again with Stiles like this?), until Scott and Malia dash into the corridor with glowing eyes and extended claws. She can only watch as they gape at her with confusion and begin attacking the orderlies. They don’t understand why she’s like this because they don’t see Stiles yet — but that changes soon enough.

Scott notices first. It makes him trip over his own feet and crash into one of the orderlies, but he barely seems to feel the impact before running over to Stiles. By the time he reaches him, his claws have retracted and his eyes are deep brown and panicked. “Stiles?  _Stiles_?" 

Scott turns him over — checks for the pulse that Lydia couldn’t find — and all Lydia can do is sit next to him with wide, broken eyes. The voices in her head are louder than ever.

When Scott starts doing CPR, Lydia shatters. 

Her earlier scream is nothing compared to the shriek that makes all the air in the room vibrate. The remaining orderlies collapse (just like Lydia’s entire world is collapsing), and Lydia wonders with detached interest if she’s killed them. But it doesn’t really matter because she’s already killed Stiles. 

"Lydia, you have to get out of here.” Scott’s words almost make her laugh because they’re so close to what Stiles told her just minutes ago — and equally ineffectual. “Lydia,  _please_ ,” Scott croaks, but it takes Malia Tate — of all people — to get her moving.

“ _Lydia_.” Malia grabs her arm and tugs her to her feet, slipping her arm around Lydia’s waist before she can fall to the ground again. “Lydia, Scott can’t take care of Stiles if he’s worrying about you too.”

“I can’t just  _LEAVE_  him,” she gasps. “Malia, he's—he's—”

“He’s not dead yet,” she insists, dragging Lydia away from the werewolf and the human on the ground. “He’s not dead until Scott stops giving him CPR, and Scott’s not going to stop until his heart starts beating again. Right, Scott?”

“Yeah,” Scott says, but the light in his eyes is as dead as Lydia’s.

“You don’t understand,” Lydia whispers. “Stiles wouldn’t run from the dread doctor. He tried to fight him, but the dread doctor injected him with something, and now Stiles isn’t breathing and his heart isn’t beating and it’s all because he came here for me and—”

“And all that won’t be worth shit if you die in here,” Malia says firmly. “Lydia, we need to leave.”

If it had been anyone else, Lydia might not have listened. But this is Malia, and she loves Stiles too (no matter how Stiles feels about her, no matter how their relationship ended), and if she can put that aside to save Lydia, then maybe Lydia can put that aside to save herself. So she helps Malia fight their way out of Eichen and lets Malia drive her to Beacon Hills Hospital, where Mrs. McCall checks her out and comes up with an excuse for why Lydia’s been moved from a mental institution to a hospital. She saves herself because Stiles did all that work to save her first.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t make Mrs. McCall break her into Stiles’ hospital room as soon as he’s stabilized.

Lydia isn’t sure what she expected to find in there. She thinks that some part of her believed, in spite of everything, that she’d walk into the room and Stiles and Scott would be joking together and Stiles would look up when she came in and give her a disgustingly wide grin. But instead she has to stare at Stiles’ prone form, draped in a hospital gown that’s too loose for his frail body. There are too many tubes, and too many wires, and the machine is beeping far too slowly for Lydia’s liking. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to be the one who ended up in a coma.  _She_  was the one who was two minutes away from a lobotomy when the power to Eichen House flickered and died. (She found out later from Malia that that was Kira’s doing.)  _She’s_  the one who should be lying on that hospital bed right now. Not Stiles. Never Stiles.

Scott looks up when she walks in. (So she isn’t the only one to illegally sneak into Stiles’ room? Of course she isn’t.) “I’m sorry—”

“No,” she interrupts. “He came to save  _me_.  _I’m_  sorry. I’m just glad you could revive him. You saved his life, Scott.”

Scott glances away. “We were still fighting, you know,” he mutters. “Because of Donovan, and Theo, and Stiles’ dad getting hurt, and a bunch of things that don’t really seem to matter anymore.” He drops his head into his hands, and Lydia can’t believe how exhausted he looks. Scott has been their alpha for too long, and she sees the toll it takes on him in his jittery hands and the line of tension in his shoulders. “Why didn’t I trust him?” he whispers. “He’s my best friend.”

“Everything had gone to hell,” Lydia says simply. “You did the best you could, Scott.”

Scott just shakes his head. “I’ve known him since we were three, and now the doctors don’t know if he’ll ever wake up and neither of us ever apologized. Getting you out of Eichen was the first thing we’d done together in a long time, and now…” He gulps. “And now we might not do anything together ever again.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Lydia snaps. “He’s going to be fine.” Her eyes soften. “Just go home, Scott. You’ve done a lot tonight.”

“So have you,” Scott points out.

She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I can’t exactly go home,” she says. “My mom still thinks I’m in Eichen where she left me, remember? And I’m not cleared to leave anyway. I’ve got nowhere to be but here.”

The ghost of a smile touches Scott’s face. “He’d like that, you know. You having nowhere to be but with him.” He stands, the weight of the world still pushing his shoulders down and making his movements stiff. “Good night, Lydia.”

“Good night, Scott.”

As soon as he’s gone, Lydia rounds on Stiles. “This is really fucking selfish of you, you know,” she says. “Dying for two whole minutes and then not fully waking up so you could avoid fixing things with Scott? He’s a fucking mess, and it’s your fault, asshole. So  _wake up_.”

Stiles doesn’t respond, of course. He’s always been as inconsiderate as possible, so this is totally normal for him. Lydia just wishes he had a choice this time. “Can you hear me?” she wonders, sliding into the chair that Scott just left. “Do you know how torn-up Scott is — screw that. Damn it, Stiles, do you know how fucking torn-up  _I_  am? You shouldn’t have come for me." 

Hesitantly, carefully, she takes his hand because there’s no one there to see. "But since you did, just… wake up soon. Okay? You need to wake up soon because I can’t do this without you. I can’t help Scott, I can’t fix this broken pack, I can’t figure out what the dread doctors are planning. And I know you can’t either, not on your own, but together… well, maybe I’ve had enough of being on my own. And maybe you have too. Please, Stiles, I know we could do this if you woke up because you’re the one who always figures it out.”

Lydia runs her fingers over the veins in his hand and thinks about every invisible scar he keeps hidden under the surface of his skin. “I miss you,” she whispers to the unconscious boy on the hospital bed. “I’ve been missing you since Allison, and I didn’t think anything could hurt more than the way I’ve been missing you, but this does. This does, and fuck, Stiles, you used to care about me, and I think you still do, so please wake up because I don’t think I can take this for much longer. The voices get worse with every second you spend hooked up to these machines. They… they’re telling me that you’re dying, Stiles, and I don’t want to believe them, so  _please wake up_.”

But he doesn’t respond, of course, because he’s Stiles fucking Stilinski and he’s an asshole but it’s not his fault that he fell in love with a girl as broken as him and it’s not his fault that it got him into this situation. 

But damn it, Lydia is still going to blame him if he doesn’t wake up. Because if he doesn’t wake up and she blames  _herself_ , she might end up in Eichen all over again… and this time, it’ll be for literally going out of her freaking mind.


	2. should this be the last thing i see

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this is officially a multi-chapter fic now... it should only be three parts though.

Stiles Stilinski is staring at Lydia Martin in shock. At least it’s an expression she’s used to.

“Hi.” He speaks without moving his mouth, so it comes out more like “Huh.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Hello to you too, Stiles.”

“I just… how are you  _here_?”

“I’ve been here all night,” Lydia says. “Did you think I was going to leave you here alone after everything that’s happened?”

“But—”

“I’m just glad you’re awake,” she continues, laying her hand on Stiles’s. A week ago, she was afraid to touch him at all — afraid that she wasn’t allowed to do that anymore — but now that he’s been dead, all those fears seem pointless now. “You scared me — you scared all of us.”

Stiles is looking at their hands with something like wonder. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Lydia swallows hard. “I shouldn’t have let you fight that dread doctor. He… he  _killed_  you, Stiles. You’re lucky Scott is CPR-certified.”

He nods absently. “But we… they got you out of Eichen, right? We’re not _both_  trapped there now, are we?”

“No, no, we’re at the hospital,” Lydia reassures him. “We’re about as safe as you can get in Beacon Hills. Everything worked out, Stiles.”

“Oh, thank God.” Hesitantly, carefully, he laces his fingers through hers. “I missed you, Lyds.”

Something like a smile crosses her face. “I missed you too.”

“Lydia? You’re still here?”

“Oh, hey, Scott,” Lydia says, looking up, that smile still glittering on her face. “Do you want to talk to Stiles for a while now?”

“What are you talking about?” Scott frowns. “Stiles isn’t awake.”

* * *

Lydia jerks upright with a gasp, almost falling out of her chair. Only Scott’s steady hands keep her in her seat. “Whoa, Lydia. Are you okay?”

But she’s already turning her face towards Stiles, desperately hoping that she’ll see the glint of his amber eyes. Instead she sees the slightest crease between his eyebrows as Stiles sleeps on, eyes firmly closed. “I fell asleep.” The heartbreak in her voice is practically palpable.

Scott widens his eyes. “Oh,” he says, voice filled with understanding. “You dreamed—”

“I thought he was awake,” Lydia mumbles. Suddenly, she realizes she’s still holding Stiles’s hand and jerks hers free. It’s shaking.  _Damn it, Stiles._  “I’ve gotta go.”

“Lydia—”

But she’s already gone, racing out of the room and down the hall to her own, sliding into bed minutes before Mrs. McCall comes in to check on her. 

“Oh, you’re back,” she smiles, taking Lydia’s blood pressure. “Good timing. My shift’s ending soon.”

“Okay.” She gulps. “Thank you for getting me in to see Stiles.”

“Of course, Lydia.” Mrs. McCall sets down a tray of disgusting hospital food for Lydia’s consumption and then takes one look at her face and frowns. She isn’t the best mom Lydia knows for nothing. “What’s wrong?”

Lydia doesn’t even try to lie to her. “Do the doctors know if Stiles is ever going to wake up?”

She sighs, the kind of long, painful sound that’s become all too common since Scott McCall became a werewolf. “I don’t know, sweetie.” She places a hand on Lydia’s knee that’s probably meant to be comforting, only Lydia won’t be comforted until Stiles is awake. “We can’t figure out what he’s been injected with, so we don’t know how to treat him. For now, we’re just trying to keep him alive.”

“Oh.” Lydia thinks about that for a second. “But if you got a sample of the substance they injected him with, do you think you could cure him?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. McCall repeats with an ache in her voice. “It depends on what the substance is. But we’d at least have a better chance of making him better.”

“Okay.” Lydia pushes herself out of bed. “Thank you for the hospital food, but I’m not really hungry.”

“Lydia?” Mrs. McCall stands up, crossing her arms. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get that sample.”

“You’re not cleared to leave the hospital, much less go after those things who call themselves doctors.” Mrs. McCall steps forward. “Lydia, I can’t let you—”

But Lydia is already racing out of her room, fully prepared to comb through all of Beacon Hills until she runs into a dread doctor… until something tugs her towards Stiles again.

“Back so soon?” Scott teases when she bursts through the door. “You better watch out, or somebody’s going to get the wrong idea about you an—”

“Something’s wrong with Stiles,” Lydia gasps, staring at the boy on the bed.

“What are you talking about? He hasn’t moved in over twelve hours—”

Just then, Stiles’s back arches. He starts shaking, the heart monitor beeps frantically, and Lydia has just enough time to see the panic in Scott’s eyes before she collapses.

* * *

“You’re back.”

Lydia blinks her eyes open and finds herself at the foot of Stiles Stilinski’s hospital bed, just where she was when she collapsed. Only now Stiles is awake.

“This is impossible,” she says, backing away. “You’re not awake, you’re — oh, God, Stiles, you were in the middle of a seizure when I — what’s going on?”

“Hell if I know.” Stiles fidgets with the IV in his arm. “I’ve figured out that I’m not awake by now, thanks to all the dreams I’ve been having. I’m no stranger to that kind of shit. But  _this_ …” He looks at her and frowns. “This doesn’t feel like a dream. Are you…  _real_?”

“Of course I’m real,” Lydia scoffs. “I’m the one having this dream. Unless…” She squints at him. “Wait. Are  _you_  real too?”

“Last time I checked. So what is this?”

“I don’t know.” She tilts her head, inspecting him. “Do you remember the last conversation we had?”

“Sure. You told me to be glad Scott was CPR-certified and said we were both at the hospital. And you, um…” His ears burn red. “You held my hand.”

Lydia chooses to ignore that last part. “So we shared  _that_  dream too? What the hell? Do you think this is because we’re—”

“Emotional tethers?” he questions. “Yeah, maybe. Doesn’t make it less weird, though.”

“But if this is real…” She lurches toward him, unsteady enough that Stiles flinches in surprise. “Stiles, you have to wake up. Before I showed up here, you were spasming and your heart was racing.”

“That could just be because I knew you were going to be here,” Stiles says quietly, and Lydia is ready to pass that off as the ridiculous flirting he used to attempt when they were sophomores except that he’s too serious and also she knows he doesn’t flirt with her ridiculously anymore. Hasn’t in years. So that comment either means a lot less than it would have two years ago… or a lot more.

“Whatever, Stiles,” she says impatiently because she doesn’t have time for her aching heart right now. “Are you going to wake up or not?”

Stiles looks away. “I don’t know how, Lyds.”

She tries not to feel like the world is dropping out beneath her feet. “Okay,” she says numbly. “Okay, then I’ll just have to do what I planned to do anyway.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

She squares her shoulders. “I’m going to find a dread doctor, and I’m going to find out what they did to you so some real doctors can heal you.”

“ _What_?” Stiles yelps. “Lydia, you can’t! You’re safe now!”

“And that doesn’t matter if you’re not!” Lydia retorts. “You look like shit, Stiles. What if the doctors can’t save you the next time you go into cardiac arrest? I can’t risk that!”

“ _And I can’t risk you!_ ”

Lydia’s mouth drops open. “That… that’s not your decision to make.”

“Isn’t it, though?” He reaches out for her hand, eyes wide and pleading, and reluctantly, Lydia takes it. “I’m not asking you to stop trying,” he says earnestly. “Look for clues. Gather evidence. Do what we always do — figure it out. But don’t confront the dread doctors by yourself. Don’t do anything stupid. That’s my job.” A laugh escapes before Lydia can stop it, and from the dumb smirk widening on Stiles’s face, she can tell he counts it as a personal victory. “Besides, Scott would probably spontaneously combust if neither of us was around to keep him on track.”

“I… fine,” she says, even though the word is a stab to her heart. “But if you die, I’m gonna kill you.”

The smile he offers her is a fucking tragedy hidden behind white teeth and amber eyes. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

When she wakes up, Stiles is still unconscious.

But at least he’s not shaking anymore.


	3. that kind of look in your eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnnnnd the final part! This whole fic was just based on tumblr line prompts, but I actually like the way it turned out, and I hope you enjoy the conclusion!

"Maybe it's better this way."

Lydia whirls around, her eyes widening when she sees Stiles on that awful hospital bed again. "What the hell?" she demands. "I'm not even at the hospital anymore. How is this still happening?"

She was discharged three days ago, and ever since, Lydia's been on a mission more important than fixing things with her mom, or catching up on schoolwork, or talking to her friends, or… or anything, really. She's been spending her time cooped up in her room  , researching every possible cause of what's happening to Stiles and narrowing down the possibilities one by one. She tries not to think about how little she likes all the remaining options.

Stiles doesn't seem to hear her. "After all, everything that's been happening is my fault," he muses. "I've caused more harm than good in the last year. Maybe this is a good thing."

Lydia realizes what he's saying, and her heart splits in half. " _Stiles_?"

He turns around and sees her, but the expression that registers on his face is more disappointment than surprise. "You weren't supposed to hear that," he mutters.

"Like hell I wasn't!" Lydia wants to rush forward, but her feet are stuck firmly on the ground — if ground even exists in this weird zone between her mind and Stiles's. "You can't honestly think things would be _better_ if you never woke up!"

"Wouldn't they?" Stiles shoots back. "I screwed up my relationship with Scott, I got you landed in Eichen House, I ruined Malia by being an asshole, and I'm pretty sure that one of these days, I'm going to give my dad a heart attack. Tell me how any of that makes me worth saving."

Lydia laces her fingers together and drops her hands in front of her, letting them bounce against her thighs. "You also saved my life."

He frowns. "Malia was the one who—"

"Malia wouldn't have been able to get me out if you hadn't shut out the voices in my head first," she reminds him. "And that's not the only time you saved me, either. When I thought I was going crazy, you helped me realize I wasn't. You told me I had real value when I thought my only assets were lip gloss and mascara."

"You saved me too," he says. "When that flare rolled toward me and Scott at that motel. I would have died if you hadn't pushed us out of the way."

"Exactly. That's what we do — we save each other. Don't ask me to break that pattern. I'm not going to do that."

"I—"

" _I'm not going to do that._ "

Lydia's tone leaves no room for argument. Slowly, reluctantly, Stiles sinks back into the bed. "At least tell me that you're not still going after dread doctors."

"No," she admits. "Just researching."

"Oh." Stiles perks up at that. Researching the supernatural is something he's had a lot of experience with. "Anything so far?"

Lydia doesn't want to tell him that the only things she's found have no cures, so she says, "Nothing much. And you really have no idea how to wake yourself up?"

"None." He grimaces. "Believe me, I've tried. It's no picnic being stuck inside my head."

Lydia thinks back to the long endless nights at Eichen, where she was constantly surrounded by screaming and wailing and howling and sometimes — when things were particularly bad — harsh, grating silence, and she finds the strength to step forward again, placing a comforting hand on the foot of his bed. "I know the feeling."

"Right." Stiles glances at her hands. "Of course you do." He swallows hard. "Lydia, how is Scott doing?"

Lydia recognizes the guilt in his question. "He's worried about you," she says gently. "He wants you to wake up… so he can apologize."

Stiles clenches his fists. "He's not the one who needs to apologize."

"I think he's already forgiven you."

"Still. I guess I do need to wake up, for that." He looks down. "And my dad?"

For a moment, Lydia considers lying — but she knows he'd see through it. Even after all this time, after all this avoidance, he still knows her. And she still knows him. How could she not? "He's a wreck," she says bluntly. "He's tearing himself to pieces over you, and none of us knows how to help him. This is what happens when you try to fight a dread doctor, Stiles."

"Lydia—"

"No, I need to do this," she says, standing up straight. "I've been so busy trying to make sure you're okay that I haven't told you how fuckingstupid you were to try to fight that dread doctor alone." _Well, except that I yelled at your unconscious body_ , she thinks, but she doesn't say that part out loud. "And you were. You were an _idiot_. How could you do that? Now you're stuck in this hospital bed in your mind with only me for conversation and the doctors don't know if you'll ever wake up and everyone at school treats me and the rest of the pack like we're made of fucking glass because they know you've been in a coma for two weeks and it's destroying us, even if they don't know why. Damn it, Stiles, I haven't slept in two fucking weeks because of you! _What the hell were you thinking_?"

Stiles just stares at her. "What other choice did I have?"

"I told you, we could have gone through the vents or—"

"Every second we wasted on a detour decreased your chances of getting out of Eichen safely." The last time Lydia can remember Stiles looking this determined, he let her drown him to save his dad. Seeing the same calm certainty on his face now is kind of alarming, actually. "There was no way in hell I was going to let them keep you locked up, so I chose to protect you as well as I could. It's like you said — we save each other, right? That's what we do. That's what I choose to do." He looks her dead in the eyes and says, "I will _always_ choose you, Lydia."

She doesn't say anything — really, she doesn't. But she makes a small, disbelieving noise in the back of her throat, and he hears it and frowns. "What?"

Just like that, Lydia gives up on holding back the tidal wave of emotion she's been suppressing for the past year. "It's funny, that's all," she says. "That you think you've always chosen me."

"I _have_."

"No. For the past year, you've chosen Malia. You've made it abundantly clear that you're not in love with me anymore."

He gapes at her. "Are you serious? I was never in love with Malia!"

Lydia jerks her chin back and furrows her eyebrows. "What?"

"I was never in love with Malia," he repeats. "That's why I said I ruined her by being an asshole — I treated her like shit. I got into that relationship because I was trying to stay away from you, trying to move on, and it failed miserably, and I got Malia tangled up in my problems and that wasn't fair to her."

When she asks, "Why were you trying to stay away from me?", her voice is small but clear. She never planned on having this conversation in Stiles's head, or her head, or wherever they are, but now that they're here, she can't imagine putting it off a second longer.

"Because you deserve so much better than me!" He swallows hard. "Lydia, I'm a murderer and a torturer and a failure, and I didn't want you anywhere near me after Allison died. I love you too much to force you to spend time with the guy who killed your best friend. I couldn't do that to you, so I tried to move on."

"I didn't want you to!" Lydia glares at him, chest heaving, trying not to stare at the way Stiles's lips are parted slightly in shock. "God, Stiles, didn't you notice?"

He frowns. "Notice what?"

"How stupid in love with you I am?"

His heartbeat spikes, if she can trust the fake heart monitor next to his bed, but other than that, Stiles's expression doesn't change. "That's not funny, Lydia."

Lydia wants to scream, and not just because she's a banshee. "You think this is a _joke_? You might be _dying_ , Stiles. Fuck you. You're such an _asshole_."

"What does me possibly dying have to do with my being an asshole?"

"Because you wasted all our fucking time!" Lydia thinks she might be crying at this point, but she's sure as hell not going to let that stop her now. "This entire year I've been alone, angry, and heartbroken, and I didn’t say anything because I thought you might actually be _happy_ with Malia, and God knows I wasn't going to screw that up for you. But now… shit, Stiles, you're just sitting there and telling me you've been in love with me _this entire time_ , and I could have spent this year with _you_ instead of with the voices in my head, and now it might be too fucking late. Stiles—"

"Fuck," he says, and suddenly Stiles is ripping sensors off his chest and dragging his IV stand with him and standing in front of her with his hands on her cheeks. "You're really in love with me."

She makes a noise somewhere between a snort and a sob. "Oh, so now you believe me."

"Fuck," he says again. "Lydia, I'm so sorry. This whole time, I've just… I've just been trying to do what's best for you."

She rolls her eyes. "If you really wanted to do what was best for me, you'd wake the hell up and ask me out."

"Wow." He blinks and shakes his head, and when he focuses on her again, Lydia sees the expression that she's been missing for the last year. He's looking with her with a little awe, and a little excitement, and a little goofiness, and a lot of love, and for the first time since Allison's death, Lydia thinks they might actually be okay. "Lydia Martin is in love with me. I…" He grins at her for the first time in a year. "Does this mean I can kiss you?"

"Not a chance."

"Okay, good, because I — wait, what?"

"You," she says, pushing his head back slightly, "are not allowed to kiss me until you're fully conscious. I am _not_ having our first real kiss inside this nonexistent room."

"Oh." His grin widens. "That is the best possible motivation you could have given me to wake up."

She reaches up and touches his hand with her fingers, smiling slightly. "I was counting on that."

He laughs — and then the white room dissolves around Lydia, and she wakes up with a dread doctor's mask obstructing her vision.

She chokes on her first scream, but the second fights its way free successfully, pushing the dread doctor away and into her wall. He staggers to his feet and clenches his metal-plated fists. _We did not finish our experimentation before_ , he says. _We will now_.

Lydia tosses her hair out of her face and rolls out of bed, landing on her feet with arms raised. "It so happens," she says, "that you could not have come at a better time. I didn't want to have to go looking for you."

The doctor tilts his head to the side slightly — maybe the only time Lydia's ever seen one of them look surprised — and Lydia springs forward, pushing her hands forward and shrieking at the top of her lungs. He topples against her bookshelf, and in the next second, she's jumping up, grabbing the collar of his jacket, and yanking him down. He hits the ground with a bang. Letting out something like a laugh, Lydia straddles him and presses her forearm against the back of his neck, shoving his mask into her carpet. "You have two options," she says easily. "Tell me what you injected Stiles with and give me a sample, or I break your neck." Lydia doesn't actually know whether she could break his neck, but she's never been more willing to try.

The dread doctor doesn't seem to want to test her abilities. He rattles off a formula that Lydia commits to memory — she'd never expected to thank God for AP chemistry until now — and pulls a syringe out of his pocket that she quickly steals. Then she takes the nearest heavy object — which just so happens to be her AP biology textbook — and bashes in the dread doctor's mask until he stops struggling. Flinging her textbook carelessly to the side, she grabs his arms, hauls him to the side of her room, and ties him to her desk with every belt, purse handle, and bedsheet she can find. Then she calls the Sheriff.

"Hello," she says as soon as he picks up. "There's a dread doctor in my room."

" _What_?" She can imagine him stuffing his gun into its holster and grabbing his car keys. "Uh, don't confront him. Call Scott. I'm on my way."

"Okay. He's tied to my desk, but you probably want to bring some sturdier restraints. Is there a better place you could take him than to the station? Your holding cells don't really have a history of being supernatural-proof."

There's a moment of silence. "Wait. Did you… beat him?"

"Literally and figuratively." Lydia looks at the syringe in her hand. "I may have also found a way to save Stiles, so come to the hospital as soon as the dread doctor's in custody. But Sheriff?" She hesitates. "Um, don't get your hopes up too much. It might not work."

She hears a clattering that means the Sheriff's dropped his keys. "This is still the best chance we've had in two weeks, though, isn't it?"

She tries not to smile. She shouldn't be getting her hopes up either, but she can't get Stiles's look of awe out of her head. "Yes, it is."

"I… thank you."

She swallows hard. "I would do anything for Stiles." Then she hangs up.

The next person she calls is Scott. "You need to meet Stiles's dad at my house."

"Okay," Scott says immediately. "What's going on?"

"I fought a dread doctor, but I don't want if he'll be conscious again by the time Stiles's dad gets here. I'd feel better if he had backup."

"Oh." Absently, Lydia wonders how many people she's going to shock today. "Where should we take him?"

"I… I don't know." Lydia can count the number of times she's said that in the past few years on two hands, and she can tell it surprises Scott too. But… "I can't think about him right now. All I know is I have the substance that hurt Stiles, and it might be able to save him. After you help the Sheriff, meet me at the hospital."

Lydia doesn’t want to waste any more time on explanations — not when Stiles's cure might be _in her hands._ She hangs up and calls Scott's mom.

"Mrs. McCall? I have something for you."

* * *

 

The next few hours are absolute torture. Lydia sits in the hospital waiting room with her head in her hands, surrounded by the rest of her pack (plus Stiles's dad) as they silently wait for news. Once, Lydia drifts off, thinking she might be able to talk to Stiles, but he doesn't appear. She can't decide if that's a good or bad thing. The voices are still telling her that he's dying. Her brain is telling her that this cure should work. Her heart is telling her that she's stupid in love with Stiles Stilinski.

Her heart is the only thing she really trusts.

Then Mrs. McCall walks out of Stiles's room with the brightest fucking smile on her face, and Lydia's vision tunnels. She hears, "He's awa—", and that's enough. She makes some awful, strangled noise of joy, and then she barrels past Mrs. McCall and practically _pounces_ on Stiles, doctors be damned.

When she kisses him, everything fades except for the pressure of his lips and his shaking hands brushing her face.

"You kissed me," he says with that awed expression again, his eyes wide and shining. "Does that mean I'm actually—"

"You're awake," she confirms, grabbing his hands and holding them to her chest. "It worked."

Behind her, an awkward balding doctor coughs. "Um, young lady, visiting is for family only at this point. And I presume you're not, um, family."

"Oh. Right." She offers Stiles a smile. "I'll talk to you later."

"Wait." Stiles frowns. "Lydia, what worked? What did you do?"

"I'll talk to you later," she repeats, locking eyes with him to make sure he knows it's a promise.

And she does.

* * *

 

A few days later, Stiles is discharged from the hospital. Lydia is waiting for him in his room when he gets home.

"Hey, Lydia," he says, tugging his shoes off, "my dad said you might be up he—" Just then, he looks up and sees her.

For an instant, he stands there, wobbling on one foot with his shoe in his hands. And then he falls backward and hits his head on his doorknob.

Lydia sits up a little, vaguely concerned. "You didn't knock yourself out again, did you?"

"What? No, I — uh — this—" He gapes at her for a moment, opening and closing his mouth like a fish, before finally saying, "Is there a reason you're naked in my bed?"

"Oh, good, your brain still works."

" _Lydia._ "

She leans back again, crossing her legs. "I'm not naked _yet_ ," she says, pulling at the strap of her bra to emphasize her point. "And I thought about letting us work up to this point… but you know, I really think we've waited long enough." She smiles. "Besides, it's not like you've never seen me naked before."

Finally, Stiles grins back at her. "I don't really remember that. Remind me?"

That night, curled up against Stiles with his arm reaching across her body and her head pillowed on his shoulder, Lydia sleeps well for the first time in a year.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr: stilestilikeslydia.tumblr.com


End file.
